“You should play into that.”

“I haven’t seen too many Black women with judicial clerkships; maybe you should... play into that.” 

 

This was the advice offered to me by someone who I, at the time, considered a mentor and confidant. I had come to them for advice on applying for post-graduate opportunities, and because I thought that they understood what it was like to navigate law school and the job search, as a first-generation student themselves, I honestly thought that they would have my best interest in mind when I came to them. I had many conversations with them regarding the barriers that first-generation students face, and I thought they “understood,” so you can only imagine how I felt when I heard these words. 

 

While on the surface, it might not seem all that bad, and I am sure that they were well-intentioned, I was disappointed to know that instead of recognizing the barriers that my identity brought me, they saw it as some sort of diversity tool or a “free pass” to securing employment. As if being a Black woman made things easier for me; as if the reason that Black women are not reflected in judicial clerkships is that they simply aren’t “playing into it” or that they, too, are not interested in such positions. I’m sure that if it were that easy, Black women would represent far more than 2.7% of federal law clerks and more than 2% of lawyers across the nation. 

 

In retrospect, what bothered me the most about their comment was that it lacked any consideration for why things are the way they are. It lacked any perspective on intersectionality. 

 

Although my mentor had been the first in their family to go to college and law school, they were not Black and they were male-identifying. This meant that their experience and perception of what it means to be a first-generation student varied greatly from mine as a Black woman. Even though we connected through our somewhat shared experience in education, their failure to recognize the complexity of my identity hindered them from truly being able to approach our conversation with a broader sense of cultural awareness. 

 

Racism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and, thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over the other and, thereby, the right to dominance. Ageism. Heterosexism. Elitism. Classism.

-Audre Lorde 

 

The reality is that Black women, like some other similarly situated marginalized groups, face double discrimination, that is, gender and race discrimination. And in reflecting on our recent class discussions surrounding intersectionality, I started to think about how the discrimination of Black women is often considered in proximity to either the race discrimination that Black men face or the gender discrimination that white women face; however, the overlap between the two are never considered in unison. 

 

The issue is that when we do not consider all facets of our identities, we overlook the barriers that accompany them. To fully understand intersectionality takes a bit of nuance, but I think that this is a critical undertaking if we are ever to truly address the ways in which marginalized groups, such as Black women, face oppression. 

We will continue to think that the reason certain groups are not represented in higher education or in certain professions is because of their unwillingness or lack of desire; rather than acknowledging the pervasiveness of the gender and racial bias they face. 

 

Although many institutions are developing initiatives to better support Black women and other marginalized groups, I think a lot of these initiatives struggle to fully address the unique experiences many of us face. At our very own “King Hall,” a school named after the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Black people make up only 2% of the entire school population and there were only seven Black women in my entire 1L class. 

 

I say all of this to say that there is so much more to be done to increase outreach and retention to Black women in the legal field, and until we do so, we will continue to overlook the issues they face. 

 

As best said by Dr. Moya Bailey on ending misogynoir, the unique form of discrimination that Black women face:

 

A world with no misogynoir is possible. I really believe the Combahee River Collective statement when they write, ‘If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.’ We need to be honest in K-12 education about the history of violence experienced by Black women as we also work to dismantle the oppressive power structures of society. Our world needs to be recalibrated and rebooted such that people, particularly those multiply marginalized, are valued more than profits.